Modi outlines achievements

Reading out virtually a report card on his government's performance in the last nine months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the central schemes launched in the last few months are meant for the poor and the marginalised section of the society and not for the rich as his government is often accused of.

“Are building toilets, Jan Dhan Yojna to open bank accounts for poor and soil cards for farmers sign of a government working for corporates,” asked Modi, concluding the discussion in the Upper House on the motion of thanks on the President's address.

The prime minister listed out a series of examples ranging from road construction, employment under the rural job guarantee scheme MGNAREGA, Aadhar linkage of development projects, pension and insurance for the poor and devolution of more funds to the states to claim that the NDA government performed far better than its UPA predecessor in the last nine months.

On the controversial land acquisition act, he said if there were any anti-farmer provision in the law, the government was ready to change that provision and requested the Congress to come forward in rectifying those flaws.

“But you (Congress) should not spread misinformation. Nobody has touched the compensation provisions and whatever compensation has been decided in the law, we would pay. We need land for the development,” he said.

Modi, however, gave the examples of the Congress-ruled Haryana and Maharashtra, who last year could not pay the compensation as envisaged in the UPA law even after acquiring the land as the financial burden was too high for the states to bear.

Responding to Congress leader Anand Sharma's charges on the transfer of senior officials, Modi listed out how the UPA government after coming to the power, removed the cabinet secretary, home secretary, defence secretary and appointed a junior officer as the foreign secretary ignoring the seniority criterion.

The prime minister also narrated how several schemes, for which the UPA claims credit, was actually initiated by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the prime minister. Those NDA-1 schemes in a different avatar were predecessors of Aadhar, MGNAREGA, RTI and Food Security Act.

On the road construction, he said in the last nine months 18 km of road construction was awarded each day and 10.1 km was achieved, which is almost double than that of the UPA achievements. “As many as 350 highway projects were stuck as the railways did not give permissions. All approvals are in place now,” he added.